When I think about history, the picture in my head is that of a roiling canvas of many choppy, intertwingled narrative streams, enveloped by many-hued nebulous…
Mental time travel: a new case of autobiographical hypermnesia
Remembering past events in minute detail, revisiting them methodically, and reliving past emotions—this is the peculiarity of people with an exceptional memory of their own lives, known as autobiographical hypermnesia, or hyperthymesia. This fascinating condition remains poorly understood, and each new case contributes to our understanding. In a recent article in Neurocase, researchers from Paris Brain Institute and the Memory, Brain, and Cognition Laboratory (LMC²) in Paris describe the extraordinary mental life of a 17-year-old girl.
The Master takes on new meaning in the age of the Intellectual Dark Web
A story of troubled men takes a new shape under the political veil of 2019
Large language memories: Psychosis and antisocial media
Using the fields of memory studies and digital humanities, this article argues that there has been a shift from more collective and social memory to more personalised and individual memory. This shift, it is argued here, can be conceptualised through the psychoanalytic concept of ‘psychosis’. While the causes of the changes in our patterns of memory have been located in capitalist and neoliberal principles, the effects of the changes in our memory habits might be found in psychosis. From falling in love with machinic AI replicas to indulging in conspiracy theories to acting as if we are social media influencers or backing ourselves to win out in impossible job markets, we are inclined towards personal fantasy, often at the expense of participating in social life. But why do we do this? Why is it easier to believe a farfetched conspiracy theory or wild personal dream than it is to participate socially and collectively in the world we live in? Part of the reason, at least, is found in our increasing habitual reliance on new and emergent technologies. Often presented to us as a brand-new form of Artificial Intelligence, these generative tools are the latest update to a longer pattern in our digital world: the trend of developing ‘relationships’ with algorithms that, to larger and smaller degrees, we come to rely on for habits of cognition and recognition. By affecting our patterns of memory, these technologies produce a kind of isolation that lends itself to individual and fantastical – rather than shared and realist – thinking.
Dopamine Trap
Dopamine Trap does narrative driven decay. With organic noise, apocalyptic soundscapes, and scathing poetry his productions cast lovecraftian solopsisms on the roof of the skull, dripping with tumors of unresolved inter-generational trauma, resignation and reckless, violent love. He delights in emptiness and the granular implications of percussive silence.
The Great Reckoning - The Ideas Letter
The world feels unsettled, as if history itself were changing tempo. The familiar landmarks of the modern age are blurring, slipping away, and the stories we once told ourselves about…
The Great Reckoning - The Ideas Letter
The world feels unsettled, as if history itself were changing tempo. The familiar landmarks of the modern age are blurring, slipping away, and the stories we once told ourselves about…
Extropia's Children, Chapter 2: This Demon-Haunted World
The rise of the rationalist movement has led to multiple strange and dark offshoots - demons, cults, hells, suicides. How and why could dedication to rational thought result in such fantastically weird and grim outcomes?
Cory Doctorow: Stories Are a Fuggly Hack - Locus
I've mentioned before, stories are weird. I mean, really, really weird. Nothing that happens in a piece of fiction has any consequence in the real world. Romeo and Juliet did not live, did not die, and the ''tragedy'' they represent is objectively less important than the tragedy of the live yogurt culture I digested at the breakfast table this morning. My theory is that the parts of our brains that …Read More
Ultra-Processed Minds: The End of Deep Reading and What It Costs Us
A reflection on the reading life. What formed it, what threatens it, and what remains.
The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World
In a book of unprecedented scope--now available in a larger format-Iain McGilchrist presents a fascinating exploration of the differences between the brain's left and right hemispheres, and how those differences have affected society, history, and culture. McGilchrist draws on a vast body of recent research in neuroscience and psychology to reveal that the difference is profound: the left hemisphere is detail oriented, while the right has greater breadth, flexibility, and generosity. McGilchrist then takes the reader on a journey through the history of Western culture, illustrating the tension between these two worlds as revealed in the thought and belief of thinkers and artists from Aeschylus to Magritte. "A landmark new book. . . . It tells a story you need to hear, of where we live now."-Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times "A very remarkable book. . . . McGilchrist, who is both an experienced psychiatrist and a shrewd philosopher, looks at the relation between our two brain-hemispheres in a new light, not just as an interesting neurological problem but as a crucial shaping factor in our culture . . . splendidly thought-provoking. . . . I couldn't put it down."-Mary Midgley, The Guardian Named one of the best books of 2010 by The Guardian
The Climate of History in a Planetary Age
For the past decade, historian Dipesh Chakrabarty has been one of the most influential scholars addressing the meaning of climate change. Climate change, he argues, upends long-standing ideas of history, modernity, and globalization. The burden of The Climate of History in a Planetary Age is to grapple with what this means and to confront humanities scholars with ideas they have been reluctant to reconsider—from the changed nature of human agency to a new acceptance of universals. Chakrabarty argues that we must see ourselves from two perspectives at once: the planetary and the global. This distinction is central to Chakrabarty’s work—the globe is a human-centric construction, while a planetary perspective intentionally decenters the human. Featuring wide-ranging excursions into historical and philosophical literatures, The Climate of History in a Planetary Age boldly considers how to frame the human condition in troubled times. As we open ourselves to the implications of the Anthropocene, few writers are as likely as Chakrabarty to shape our understanding of the best way forward.
Tor's Cabinet of Curiosities
Lost civilisations make good TV, but archaeology’s real stories hold far more wonder | Flint Dibble
I took on a pseudoscientist because misinformation about history too often goes unchallenged
Civilization and Its Discontents
Civilization and Its Discontents is a book by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. It was written in 1929 and first published in German in 1930 as Das Unbehagen in der Kultur.
